Results Oriented Supply Chain Optimization for your small business

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ROSCO Glossary!

If the eye chart above makes you dizzy, get your bearings with the ROSCO glossary…​​ROSCO (Results-Oriented Supply Chain Optimization) – A four-phase process that you can learn about here!

​OTD – On-Time Delivery. What you probably don’t have from your suppliers or to your customers if your supply chain isn’t as tight as a John Elway spiral.

​Safety stock (versus re-order point) – inventory you keep for emergencies (versus the point at which you re-order to replenish for normal business operations). People often use these two terms synonymously. People also often text while driving, salt their food before tasting it and start world wars.

Supplier Agreements (also – Master Agreements, Quality Agreements, Scope of Work, Scope of Services, Statement of Work, etc.) – think of these as pre-nups. You don’t want to draft one of these yourself and, if everything goes swimmingly, you’ll never need to refer to it. But if your company pays suppliers for goods and then ships said goods to a customer, you might want someone to work one or more of these up for you. Sometimes P.O. terms and conditions can be used instead of one of these agreements. And sometimes the Cubs win a World Series.

3PL – Third Party Logistics provider. A warehouse. Not yours. But one that keeps your inventory for you and ships it to your customers for you. If you’re Beyoncé, the 3PL is iTunes.

VMI or SMI – Vendor (or Supplier) Managed Inventory. A supplier looks into your system or where you hold inventory and re-supplies you when they see you are low on inventory. I believe this was invented by the NSA.

PI – Physical Inventory. The process of counting, recording and reconciling every part you stock (that you have, will have or had the ability to sell). Sometimes, if you go to a mall just as it’s closing, you can see the employees at The Gap getting ready to spend their night doing this. Don’t let the dread in their expression fool you – your PI will be worse. It will be horrible. It will be disappointing and mind-numbing and no amount of coffee will get you through it with a smile on your face. But you will have to do this at some point, unless you know a secret that only ROSCO can tell you. Email me here to learn the secret to avoid doing a PI…

Cycle Count – …or just keep reading. When you lay out a plan to count just a few items a day or week but that ultimately add up to counting everything once a year, most banks, accountants and auditing firms will allow this to replace an annual PI. This process of counting a prescribed number of items over a regular cycle is called cycle counting. If you work for Harley Davidson, there’s a pun in there that probably gets old pretty fast.

Blanket PO (related: Kanban PO) – “I don’t know how much to order, so I’m just going to order so much that I’m covered.” Often followed by, “Wait, I’m on the hook for how much? I didn’t realize those blanket PO’s financially obligated me to purchase all of that! How do I cancel the rest of my blanket PO or Kanban PO?”

SRM – Supplier Relationship Management. At its best, a win-win partnership in which both you and your suppliers profit in a transparent, healthy environment. At its worst, replace the “R” with an ampersand (“&”) and pull on a black leather mask with the mouth zippered shut and no eyeholes.

COGS – Cost of Goods Sold. How much all that stuff you’re selling costs you. Please, please let it be for less than you sell it. With enough left over to pay for things like your rent, employees, insurance, etc.

SKU – stock keeping unit. A part number. It’s really that simple, but people get confused about this because it’s one of those acronyms that is often sounded out like SCUBA and FIFA. When you start hearing “skew” you stop seeing the letters S-K-U and you disassociate the acronym with the meaning, “stock keeping unit”. You have SKU’s for everything you sell and some of the sub-parts (components) that make up the things you sell.

BOM – bill of material. Another acronym you sound out. This is basically the recipe of the thing you sell. If you sell a Chevy, you have a BOM that’s about 200,000 SKU’s that make up the car. If you sell ‘smores, your BOM is: 1 each, marshmallow, melted; 2 each, Graham crackers, .5 each, Hershey’s chocolate bar.

FOB – freight on board. One of several acronyms in the Incoterms family. You don’t pronounce FOB as fob but you do pronounce INCO in Incoterms as ink-oh (it stands for International Commercial). Incoterms answer the question, “When your company buys a thing from a supplier, where do you take ownership of it?” When it leaves the supplier (ex works/EXW)? When the supplier puts it on a truck/ship/airplane (FOB)? When it arrives at your port or facility (CIF – cost, insurance, freight – or DDP – delivered, duty paid)? Or about a dozen other Incoterms. Each has its benefits and drawbacks and, like everything else in life and business and supply chain, is negotiable.

​Sheet-to-floor/Floor-to-sheet – back to inventory. As hard as it may be to believe, there’s more than one way to count your things. Sheet-to-floor is when you print out some kind of inventory report and then go out to the floor to count, using that sheet as your guide. Floor-to-sheet is going out to floor first and counting what’s there, and then comparing that to what your inventory control system says you have. These are complete oversimplifications of counting processes.

WYRATWTH – Wow, you read all the way to here? I barely made it to here.

There are obviously many, many more exciting and useful supply chain terms and I’ll keep adding more. Email me if you have a question or use the Google.